VSCode Apple Silicon crashes when running anything on terminal (zsh)

[arudp]

Hi!

I have both an M2 Macbook Air and an M4 Macbook Pro and recently noticed VSCode started hanging and eventually crashing when running anything on the terminal.

I figured it was a bug introduced in the latest release (January) since I had just updated it and went on running things in the external terminal.

However, I was working on my M2 on a profile whose settings are not synced, and hadn't even realised the terminal was working just fine. That's when I added CommitMono (beautiful work, btw!) because I like it a lot, and then VSCode started crashing any time I ran anything on the terminal!

I've checked around and haven't found much, so I'm guessing it must be quite a corner case. I'll be using another font in VSCode in the meantime and keep CommitMono for everything else, I have no clue what it must be doing with VSCode.

The logs say something really unhelpful too (to me, at least):

2025-01-19 20:13:41.105 [error] CodeWindow: renderer process gone (reason: crashed, code: 5)
2025-01-19 20:13:41.425 [info] Extension host with pid 39633 exited with code: 0, signal: unknown.

I reckon it might be something to do with Apple Silicon being ARM stuff, but no idea.

[arudp]

As some extra context:

• This breaks with a command as simple as ls
• If I just change the terminal font ("terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "Inconsolata") the terminal stops crashing

So thanks to that, as of now I'll use CommitMono for the rest fontFamily options and hopefully those won't have any issue. For what is worth, other terminals (at least non-Electron-based) don't seem to have any issue, be that embedded (JetBrains IDEs, Zed) or standalone (Apple's Terminal, Warp).

[markjamesardens]

I am also having this issue, but on Windows 11 24H2 (Intel), on both VSCode and VSCode Insider with Git Bash as the shell. It does not occur with Powershell however.

Replication steps:

• Open Visual Studio Code
• Ctrl-Shift-P > User Settings (JSON)
• Add the JSON entry:

{
    "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "\"CommitMono\", Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace"
}

• Open a new Terminal: Ctrl-Shift-P > Create New Terminal (with Profile) > Git Bash
• In the new terminal window, type ls
• VSCode will become unresponsive
• The memory usage displayed in Task Manager will continue increasing until VSCode crashes with the following error:

The window terminated unexpectedly (reason: 'oom', code: '-536870904')

[arudp]

Hey @markjamesardens!

I forgot to write an update and saw this in my notifications feed, so thanks for the reminder! I thought it might be a ligature/kerning issue so I downloaded a version with all these 👇 deactivated and that works.

Choose download features

ss01: Ligatures
ss02: Arrows
ss03: Smart case
ss04: Symbol spacing
ss05: Smart kerning

So if you want to have consistent fonts you can use your regular CommitMono for everything but the terminal and then have "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "CommitMono<NameOfYourChoice>, ..." to use a different version 👍

[eigilnikolajsen]

Wow, this is a really weird issue! Glad you found a workaround for now. Obviously, the font shouldn't be the issue, and the font being reason for the terminal crashing, really bugs me. I'll see if I can address this in some way.

[arudp]

Yeah, tbh I wouldn't say "it's the font" so much as "VSCode's terminal has an issue with a specific feature that just happens to be used by this font", otherwise other terminals would also crash 🤷‍♂

[cfuhlman]

I'm seeing a similar issue when using CommitMono with ligatures and all the smart features turned on in the VSCode terminal. If I add "terminal.integrated.fontLigatures.enabled": true, to my user settings VSCode freezes up. I'm on a Mac M1 with MacOS 12.7.6 (I know it's out of date, but my company won't let me update it).

[rainyrainyday]

I encountered this issue today as well when changing my terminal font in VSCode to Commit Mono with terminal.integrated.fontLigatures.enabled set to True. This setting caused no issues with Fira Code (the previous font I used).

[gerwaric]

I ran across this problem with CommitMono as well, and it seems to be a known issue that happens with at least one other font:

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/239541

[damster101]

Using CommitMono without ss03: Smart case feature fixes the crashing issue for me.

[nguyenjessev]

I can confirm that this also happens on Windows 11 25H2.

Disabling ss03: Smart case also resolved the issue for me, even with all other features enabled.